


Self-Immolation

by Aqualisier



Category: InuYasha - A Feudal Fairy Tale
Genre: Angst, Emotional Manipulation, F/M, Shapeshifting, can naraku still shapeshift at this point in canon? who cares it's porn, mild dubcon maybe?, suicide-baiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:29:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24286672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aqualisier/pseuds/Aqualisier
Summary: Naraku takes Inuyasha's guise again. Kikyou is not amused.
Relationships: Kikyou/Naraku (InuYasha)
Comments: 26
Kudos: 48





	Self-Immolation

He appears once again in the form of Inuyasha.

Kikyou grits her teeth, because Naraku’s guise of her lover had once cost her her life, but looking at him now it’s all wrong. The way he holds himself; the vacant malice that fills his eyes; the way the pieces of his body fit together; that foul, suffocating youki that would make her retch if her clay-doll body were able.

She will not be fooled again. She doubts he expects her to be.

“ _Naraku_." His name is poison on her tongue. "Do you intend to mock me?” she asks, voice level and firm, brimming with fury.

Naraku laughs, low and vile. It’s still very much his laugh, even filtered through a different set of vocal chords. “I thought this form might be more suited to your tastes. What do you think?”

She narrows her eyes, tightens her grip on her bow. “What are you playing at this time?”

“The last time I took this man’s form,” he says, “was the day you died. It’s nostalgic, isn’t it?”

“So this is just another one of your schemes to kill me, is that it?” She smirks. “It won’t work. It doesn’t matter what form you take, so long as Onigumo’s heart still beats inside you. You can’t kill me.”

Speaking with Naraku, challenging him like she does, is a dance with death. Dangerous, probably foolish on her part, but—there’s a strange thrill and beauty in it, in their rhythm, in matching his steps and leaving him wanting. In destroying him from the inside out.

Naraku regards her coldly, and that gaze of his is so _wrong_ on that face. He steps forward, and she holds herself in place, not giving him an inch. She won’t give him the satisfaction.

Suddenly he jerks forward, snatches her wrist, grasps it in his claws until she drops her bow and the dry earth of her skin cracks open. There’s no pain.

“Wh—“ she starts, but she knows.

He’s not trying to kill her.

“As I thought,” he says. “Your body still longs for Inuyasha's touch, on a level beyond physical. It's visible in your every muscle, from the eased tension in your shoulders to the part of your lips.”

“You expect me—“ she damn near spits in his face, “—to spread my legs for you, because you look like Inuyasha? Is that what your aim is? Don’t make me laugh.”

She’s playing with fire, and she knows it. Onigumo didn’t want her dead—he wanted her broken, violated, writhing beneath him. If Naraku intended to have his way with her, that dead man’s heart would offer no protection. She knows that. And yet, playing with fire, with that desire that burns ice-hot within Naraku’s veins, dancing close enough to the blaze to scorch her fingertips, is the only heat she can feel, her clay body cold like death.

She burned alive once already. It won’t happen again.

But this isn't Onigumo she's dealing with. Onigumo would have tried to force himself on her long ago, as soon as he had the physical strength to do so, and he would have found she was far from defenseless.

Naraku, on the other hand, has never made any advances on her in line with Onigumo's desires. He's not trying to kill her. He's not trying to rape her. So what does he desire?

(He might not know the answer to that himself.)

His grip on her wrist loosens, face still cold and impassive, and his fingers slide an inch down her arm. The familiarity of that skin against hers makes her shudder—only slightly, but enough that Naraku notices. He smirks, tilts his head, regards her like an amusing scientific curiosity, and lets her go.

"Try as you might to act untouchable and above the world, Kikyou," he says, "you're just a human like any other. You're not above your base, carnal desires. Your love for Inuyasha is no more pure than the love of any other woman. Am I wrong?"

Kikyou lowers her gaze, glancing past his jawline, the half-open hem of his robes, his biceps, his claws, and bites the skin inside her mouth. She can't forget—the warmth of Inuyasha’s lips against hers (cold, lifeless), and the shudders that reverberated through the deepest parts of her being at his touch.

Naraku is not Inuyasha. But he’s not wrong.

Life as a miko meant abandoning her personhood, her womanhood. Impurities in the soul are what define one’s humanity, but her life was defined by protecting the Shikon Jewel. With the end of her life that purpose was forfeit. In life, she was above the world. In death, she’s a being of dirt and earth and she _knows_ what she wants.

Naraku reads her silence, her averted gaze, as the concession it is. He chuckles. “How does it feel, to watch from afar as he yearns for another woman? For the woman you _could_ have been. The woman you almost were.”

“Inuyasha loves me,” she says sharply. “He will not simply forget me.”

“Perhaps. But is that really for the best?" he asks. "Kagome is warm. Alive. Pure. Filled with joy. You, on the other hand, are dead. Broken. Discarded. A vestigial existence that can bring him nothing but sorrow.”

Naraku’s venom pierces her to her bloodied core.

A cruel smile snakes its way along his lips. “Are you truly so selfish as to condemn your beloved to a life spent loving the dead? To stunt the growth of your other self, the version of you reborn with a renewed chance at happiness?"

Her breath hitches, and he knows he got to her. 

He goes for the kill.

"Wouldn’t it be better for everyone..." His fingers ghost along her jawline. "...if the dead returned to where they belong?”

So that’s it. He can't hurt her physically, so he's shifted weapons. Unable to kill her with his own hands, he decided to try goading her into doing the deed herself.

She grits her teeth, glares up at him. Even for Naraku, this is low.

His words hurt, in a way she hasn’t hurt since the day he wore Inuyasha’s skin and betrayed her love. But to acknowledge that hurt, that he’s given voice to her darkest thoughts, is to admit his power over her, because that’s what Naraku _does_ , what he _is_. He’s the darkness that seeps into everybody’s hearts given corporeal form. Accepting that darkness means letting him in. Giving into it means he wins.

(But that’s not the only thing Naraku is. He's also—)

So instead, she retaliates.

She knows his weak point, too.

He did not expect her to kiss him. He did not _ever_ expect her to kiss him _aggressively_ , much less bite down on his lip and take advantage of his shock to shove him to the ground and climb onto his lap before his brain can finish processing this explosive turn of events.

“I,” Kikyou says, and tugs open the collar of Naraku’s robe, “am _alive_. I will _not_ lie down and die for you.”

The look he gives her is absolutely stupefied, and it's so, _so_ satisfying, on a visceral level completely unbecoming of a miko. The corners of her lips creep upwards into a smirk. She continues, runs her hands along his chest muscles and pushes his robe off his shoulders. She grasps his biceps, looks him in the eye—like this, he almost looks like Inuyasha—and kisses him again, stops him from getting the last word.

It takes him a moment, but Naraku does regain himself, grasps her shoulders, kisses her furiously, clutches her body as if to devour her whole. He fumbles open her kimono and she grabs fistfuls of his hair, Inuyasha's hair, rides the unsightly wave of intensity, aggression, frustration, desire, hatred, like the creature of mud she is. The chill air hits her all at once as Naraku throws off her robes, and the warmth of his hands— _those_ hands—on her clay skin, as if she were still made of flesh and blood, sends primal, electric shudders up and down her spine.

Kikyou digs her nails into the spider-shaped burn on his back. He may look like Inuyasha, but she will not pretend for a moment that it's actually him.

She grinds against his hips, feels him harden against her. The friction lessens as her arousal heightens, and she shoves him to the ground, pushes aside the tangle of clothing at their waists, and fucks him.

Naraku lies beneath her, dazed, hair disheveled and face flushed and those golden eyes he has no right to wear glazed over, beholding her with lustful reverence, and she's never felt so powerful. The distance between herself and the real Inuyasha has widened—she knows that. Even knowing each other's innocence, the incident that ended their lives slashed a chasm between them that could be bridged, but not fully mended. Her heart had been shattered, and put back together, but left scarred and ugly, marred and impure. He still loves her, and she him, but sometimes love alone does not beget happiness.

She is not the girl she used to be. She cannot love Inuyasha as she did then, cannot forge the life with him that she so desperately wanted. Kagome can give him the happiness that's been stolen from her, and she should be nothing but happy for them. But she isn't. She's bitter, twisted, selfish, and human.

But Naraku.

Naraku's heart is _hers_ , whether he likes it or not.

Her breath comes heavy and shallow, hissing through clenched teeth as she rides him. She thinks about what could have been—what her first time lying with Inuyasha _should_ have been. He would have made his wish on the Shikon Jewel, and then... then they would have held a small marriage ceremony, surrounded by her loved ones. The two of them would have been bound forever, and then he would have carried her to her room, laid her on the bed and kissed her like a fairytale princess.

In that life, they would have explored their newfound humanity together by way of love. In this one, she explores it alone by way of hatred.

"K-Kikyou—"

She loses herself in fantasy until Naraku's climax slams her back down to reality, with enough force that she finishes just after, and all that remains is the unsavory wreckage of bodily fluids left in their wake. She didn't even notice that Naraku's guise had cracked open beneath her—his eyes red, his hair black at the roots, and the left side of his body beginning to fray into the disgusting amalgamation of youkai that is his true existence.

For a moment, they sit there in silence, panting heavily, gazes locked. Then, Kikyou stands up abruptly, redresses herself as Naraku stares up at her with an unreadable expression. She leaves without a word.

He finally speaks as she walks away. "So you've chosen to surrender to your human desires, after all."

Once again, she gets the last word. "So have you."

It's only when she's sure he can't see her, can't hear her, that she breaks down and sobs like a child.

* * *

Apparently, Naraku's monthly transformation _can_ be triggered involuntarily. He wonders, belatedly, how Inuyasha will react when he tells him that he deflowered the woman he claimed as his.

Rather than deny it, he wonders if Kikyou will instead assert the truth of who deflowered whom.

It doesn't matter, though. She won the battle, but he'll win the war.

**Author's Note:**

> decided to binge inuyasha on a whim 20 years late bc the upcoming sequel anime looks cute and this pairing grabbed me by the BALLS from their first fucking interaction and would not let go. can't believe I'm writing inuyasha fanfiction in 2020. Help Me.


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